Turner Prize 2008: culture's Grand National

Everyone knows the point of the Turner Prize. It exists to get contemporary British art onto the front pages of our newspapers once a year. Normally as some sort of comic relief Â­ amongst the winners and nominees we've had men in bear suits (Mark Wallinger), male potters in ladies' clothing (Grayson Perry), women's beds (Tracey Emin), people who simply flick light switches on and off (Martin Creed), brothers with dildo obsessions (Jake and Dinos Chapman), not to mention shark-and cow-picklers (Damien Hirst). And last night Mark Leckey, a self-proclaimed 'modern dandy' (he looks like a slimmed-down Justin Lee Collins) whose work acts as a homage to and commentary on recent popular culture, from Felix the Cat to Homer Simpson via James Cameron's Titanic, collected this year's gong from rock star Nick Cave.

In tune with the times: Mark Leckey

'I didn't expect it,' Leckey said after winning (although most of the art-watching public and everyone who worked at a bookmakers did). 'I am chuffed to bits. It's great to do something that has some kind of effect on British culture. Exactly what that effect is, other than the artist becoming Â£25,000 richer and having another line to add to his CV is, of course, the big question.

Most critics have complained that this year's shortlisted artists Â­ the others being Runa Islam, Goshka Macuga and Cathy Wilkes Â­ have been a bit dull, a bit unknown, a bit serious and generally un-Turner Prize-ish. 'Who cares who wins?' wrote this newspaper's Richard Dorment; 'turn up, tune in and drop off' complained Rachael Campbell-Johnston in The Times. It's ironic, really, given that we live in a world in which John Sergeant walks out of 'Strictly Come Dancing' because he's worried about detracting something from the dignity and seriousness of that competition (but that episode, of course, might also indicate that Leckey's work is perfectly in tune with the times). And of course it's not that long ago that everyone was complaining about the fact that the Turner Prize was only about shock and sensation.

Still, 60,000 people have come to see the exhibition in the past two months and here we are talking about a young(ish) British artist. It's also worth remembering that both France and Germany have subsequently come up with similar awards to help propel their artists into the national and international limelight.

But if you want to know what the Turner Prize is really all about you need only look to the fact that most of the recent commentary on Wilkes has revolved around the fact that she had the longest odds ever and that none of the three bets placed on her to win amounted to more than Â£7.99. The Turner Prize is culture's Grand National. We look at it not only for who's going to win, but also for who's going to take a fall.